Visitors Center

The Bethlehem Tourism Authority won't be moving to Main Street. Instead, the Chamber of Commerce office space at 509 Main St. that was being eyed as a visitors center will be converted into a more visitor-friendly place for Chamber activities. As it stands today, visitors are greeted by a wall, an empty space and a corridor that leads to the Chamber workings beyond. The conclusion of the decade-long search for a suitable home for a tourism center appeared headed to Main Street about a year ago, when space vacated by the Lehigh River Foundation in the front part of the Chamber offices became available.

SteelStacks, the arts and culture campus anchored by the ArtsQuest Center and PBS39 at site of the former Bethlehem Steel plant, is among the 28 finalists in the Urban Land Institute Philadelphia's first Willard G. "Bill" Rouse III Awards for Excellence. In its describing the SteelStacks project, the institute called it a "truly remarkable and creative adaptive use" that transformed the former plant into a "cultural center that preserves the history of steelmaking while providing open space for events and setting a new course for the city.

All it took was a name change for a proposed building in the Lower Mount Bethel Township recreation area, and the $1.2 million project -- squashed March 27 by the township Zoning Hearing Board -- was back on track. Grant administrator John Mauser originally had referred to the building as the Visitors' Center. It was to be built on a 9-acre tract donated by PPL Corp. and would include a park-and-ride lot, and the first part of two pedestrian trails between Riverton and Martins Creek.

Once it's completed, the walkway on the historic Hoover-Mason Trestle will not only give visitors a feel for what it was like to work at Bethlehem Steel, they'll hear about it from those who did. The 2,500-foot-long elevated path, 45 feet high, will usher visitors between the Sands entertainment complex and the storied blast furnaces. It will parallel the tracks used by rail cars to transport ore from the Lehigh River to the blast furnaces for processing. Visitors will find a concept akin to long-dormant structures in other parts of the world that have been mostly left to the elements, said developer Antonio Fiol-Silva of Wallace Roberts & Todd, the Philadelphia design firm selected to create the walkway.

Tourists heading to downtown Easton have a new place to get information and plan their Lehigh Valley experience. The city's new visitors center opened Friday in the lobby of the Sigal Museum on Northampton Street. The museum added brochures and pamphlets about Easton and Lehigh Valley attractions and staffers have been trained to assist visitors. "People still want information face to face," said Michael Sterschi, president of Discover Lehigh Valley at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Tim Herman came to Bethlehem to see Huey Lewis & The News, accompanying his mother this week to the headline concert at Musikfest. But the 26-year-old history buff stumbled upon a lot more when his mother made a pit stop at Bethlehem Landing, the new visitors center carved out of the oldest building still standing at the redeveloped Bethlehem Steel plant. As festival-goers headed into the center's gleaming restrooms, Herman wandered into an exhibit room featuring oversized photographs and kiosks that introduce visitors to the history of the old plant and tourist attractions across the Lehigh Valley.

Frank Behum Sr. believes he has a pretty big stake in what happens at the old Bethlehem Steel plant, but not in money invested or a job. His stake is legacy. After working 30 years at "The Steel," the retired motor inspector heads a small group, the Steelworkers' Archives, that has spent the last 11 years recording and retelling the stories of aging workers. He wants to keep alive the history of what happened at the century-old plant as its redevelopment draws millions to concerts, festivals and more.

The Lehigh Valley Mall won't be home just to shopping anymore. It will be a place to map out hiking adventures and discover local history. The Whitehall Area Chamber of Commerce is set to open a visitors center in a building formerly occupied by Bixler's Jewelers on the mall property, a move that Chamber Executive Laura Long hopes will make the township more visible to residents and visitors. The center on MacArthur Road will be stacked with pamphlets and volunteers eager to tell tourists what to explore during their stay in the Valley and to highlight to residents what they haven't seen in their own backyards.

Displaced from the Main Street building that was to offer a high-tech welcome to Moravian Bethlehem, the city's tourism authority is setting up a new visitors center in the Robinson Center of the Lehigh Valley Bank building. Authority members said yesterday that the bank has agreed to lease the authority the basement section of the building with an entrance along Guetter Street. The lease is free for the first year but could go to $585 a month after that. "It seems that it's been decided for us," said Neville Gardner, who ended his term as authority chairman yesterday.

Easton Mayor Thomas F. Goldsmith will be joined at 10 a.m. today by representatives of the partners in the Two Rivers Landing for the long-awaited groundbreaking ceremony for the Visitors Center at the Orr's and Farr's buildings on Centre Square. Barbara Kowitz, administrative assistant, said the ceremony will be fun, giving both officials and city residents an opportunity to see what will be the lobby for Two Rivers Landing, the $8 million project hoped to be the linchpin for downtown's revitalization.

GETTYSBURG — As part of a project to return key portions of the battlefield to their 1863 appearance, Gettysburg National Military Park is getting ready to remove the old visitors center parking lot on North Cemetery Ridge. Preparations are now underway for C.E. Williams, a contractor for the nonprofit Gettysburg Foundation, to tear out the asphalt, regrade the area to its historic profile and plant meadow grasses. The park expects this phase of the project to begin this month and take two to three months to complete, depending on the weather.

Bethlehem's swing back from a once-thriving steel town didn't start with the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, but it's become an emblem of the city's comeback. At the old ore pit, where Bethlehem Steel stored the fuel that powered the giant plant for nearly a century, the casino emerged in 2009. It attracts 8 million visitors a year and jump-started development on other parts of the old Steel site. People now go there for concerts, boxing matches, dining and shopping. And deeper into the city, away from the blast furnaces, Main Street and parts of the South Side that once depended on well-paid steelworkers have recast themselves with yoga studios, coffee shops, tech companies and restaurants serving everything from a slice of pizza to osso buco.

From the painted black concrete floor to the brushed stainless steel logo, Weyerbacher's new visitor center is industrial chic. But let's be honest, as cool as the raw concrete bar, diamond plate accents, and two-dozen taps capped with Weyerbacher's joker icon is, it's the beer that draws people in - and the visitor center is all about the beer. The hours have also been expanded more than 700 percent - from a narrow window on Friday and Saturday afternoons to a more relaxed noon to 7 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

SHANKSVILLE — Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, who broke ground Tuesday for a new visitors center at the Flight 93 National Memorial, will speak today at the Somerset County site where 40 passengers and crew died 12 years ago. Her visit is part of an annual observance at the memorial of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It includes a reading of the names of the 40 passengers and crew of United Flight 93 who are credited with thwarting a second terrorist attack on Washington, D.C. Their plane crashed in Western Pennsylvania as some passengers and crew fought the four hijackers who had taken control of the aircraft.

You have about a week to ponder Mount Tammany — a 1,500-foot-tall fist of rocks and trees at the mouth of the Delaware Water Gap — from the beach at Kittatinny Point. With Congress at loggerheads over the federal budget, the National Park Service slashed spending across the country — including the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area — by 5 percent. That comes to just under $500,000 at the Delaware Water Gap. The cut wipes out 17 seasonal positions, reduces maintenance and mowing and curtails guided hikes.

If it succeeds, Ruckus Brewing's plan to bring the long-neglected Neuweiler Brewery in Allentown back to life promises more than just craft-brewed beer and a new place to drink it. The ambitious $33 million proposal would also offer a business incubator, room for art exhibits, offices, retail and light industry, and a visitors center designed to draw people to the "Brewer's Hill" along the city's Lehigh riverfront. The brewing company - an offshoot of a New York City-based marketing and business consulting firm - has offered the Allentown Commercial and Industrial Development Authority $1.7 million for the 4.6-acre property at Front and Gordon streets.

A study of the need for a visitors center in Bethlehem was authorized at last week's meeting of the Bethlehem Visitor Collegium. The study, to be funded by First Valley Bank, and conducted by Spillman Farmer Architects, will determine the functions to be included in, and the total scope of, the project. Interviews will be held with the leadership of five organizations making up the collegium and with other related agencies. In other business, Susan Gangwere, director of community relations at Moravian College, reported on the possibility of preparing a uniform guide to be used in the orientation of volunteers for all five member organizations.

Construction of a visitors center -- with restrooms -- in Bethlehem should be the priority of the Bethlehem Tourism Authority, say members of an advisory committee. The committee, made up of representatives from about 25 community groups, businesses and government agencies, spent much of its first meeting last night reviewing the $30 million menu of projects that promise to lure people to Bethlehem. The committee discussed the authority's priority to reconstruct the 18th Century industrial area along the Monocacy Creek before constructing a high-tech visitors center to link the industrial area to downtown.

Tim Herman came to Bethlehem to see Huey Lewis & The News, accompanying his mother this week to the headline concert at Musikfest. But the 26-year-old history buff stumbled upon a lot more when his mother made a pit stop at Bethlehem Landing, the new visitors center carved out of the oldest building still standing at the redeveloped Bethlehem Steel plant. As festival-goers headed into the center's gleaming restrooms, Herman wandered into an exhibit room featuring oversized photographs and kiosks that introduce visitors to the history of the old plant and tourist attractions across the Lehigh Valley.

SHANKSVILLE - A $2 million grant will allow for creation of an 800-foot pedestrian bridge over the Flight 93 park's natural wetlands, lawmakers said Tuesday. The bridge, pegged for completion in September 2014, will finish what officials say will be a quality 1.7-mile hike circling the Field of Honor. Patrons taking that stroll will encounter the Wall of Names along with the yet-to-be-built visitors center and the bridge. The money is part of $3 million allocated to the Flight 93 National Memorial as part of the recently passed federal transportation bill.